Mayer Spivack (1936 - 2011) is @MayerSpivack on Twitter. He was a consultant and advisor on organizational behavior, innovation, and learning, based near Boston, Massachusetts. He was also an artist working in a variety of media. All writing and artworks presented here are the original work and are the copyrighted property of Mayer Spivack. Nothing on this weblog is aggregated from other sources. Reasonable use involving copying with attribution, and limited sharing not for profit, are allowed. Your comments are invited. This blog is now maintained by his son, Nova Spivack. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your interest.

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1 post categorized "Lumia photography"

April 15, 2009

Artists have practice in survival on minimal rations and
little income. Many make little or no income from art, but with pluck and luck
can make a side-job support their own work efforts. Peanut-butter and impasto paint
are both common artist’s materials. Peanuts in—paints out.

Some people must be paid to do a stitch of work, while
artists gladly pay for the privilege of working. That is the first paradox. The
second paradox is that what the larger economy values (not necessarily art),
has now become massively devalued and everyone else’s shirts are in tatters,
the hair shirts worn by artists are still as itchy, and covered with wet clay
and paint.

While Christies and other Auction houses, and the
galleries report declining art sales, this does not much affect most living
artists whose art is rarely shown, and infrequently offered at high-end
auctions.

Now, as the economic slump closes factories and stores, causing
bankruptcies and foreclosures, artists work right on into the night, their
studio lights burning brightly.

Many people who disliked their jobs have now lost them
along with their income and security. Artists still have their artwork and love
to do it. They are used to not having security and they don’t have it now. Yet,
we are not all in the same boat. Artists keep on working, creating the inherent
value of discovery and invention. They open our senses to what was previously
unnoticed, sometimes make ‘beautiful’ objects or images, and in the process
they re-create our ideas of the beautiful; and they remain busy.

They are working to create something of real value to themselves. How could art be “real value”? If I
replace the word ‘real’ with ‘long-enduring’ does that help? New breakthrough artworks become the great art
treasures of tomorrow and their value may last for generations, if not for
centuries. Notice the word ‘may last’—this is not risk-free investment. No
investment is risk-free, as today’s headlines demonstrate. It is up to the
collector/art buyer to perform their own due-diligence; to know the current art
world, and to go it one better based on their personal aesthetic choices, to
invest in the un-noticed or undervalued artists, find the significant, the
rare, and to buy and to exhibit these works, and thereby create a niche for
their growing collection.

Most of the time, the works of living artists are affordable,
because artists must meet a ‘price-point’ that smaller art collectors can bear.
Now during the economic slump these artworks are relative bargains, available
to the more prosperous collectors who have not lost their taste for art that
they still love, even though they no longer can afford the work of great
masters.

This is their time to pounce. Great art collections were acquired
this way, when relatively wealthy collectors, art patrons, galleries, and
private buyers have invested in art while others counted only their losses.
Their investments in art were often relatively so small in comparison with
their own larger economic losses (along with the losses of others), that the downside
risk was negligible while the upside possibilities were great.

Many of those investments appreciated wildly over decades
and are the reasons that we visit now museums. Museums, these days more so than
banks, continue to retain works of real value.

Now is the time for smart people to visit their local
artists, before the quick old foxes wake the lazy dogs.

Blogroll of honor + Websites

The Alex Foundation- Home pageIrene Pepperberg studies cognitive process, teaching and learning in birds. She is problably the most recognized researcher on avian cognition in the world. Alex, her now famous long-time research subject and 'collaborator' recently died at half his life expectancy. Now Wart and Griffin are her collaborators. They are saying and doing things we used to believe that only small children, great apes, and dolphins could do. Her brilliant work deserves better funding.

Minding the PlanetNova is a cognitive scientist and high-tech entrepreneur working on technologies that overcome our information overload. He has founded companies and is now developing interactive internet software, TWINE, that we all need. His thinking covers a great range. He is my Son.